Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Beyond FROM BEYOND (revised)

Carolyn Purdy-Gordon gives Jeffrey Combs a piece of her mind in FROM BEYOND.

I've received a couple of e-mails inquiring whether I saw the director's cut of FROM BEYOND when it ran on Monsters HD the other night. Indeed I did.

I've always liked FROM BEYOND, one of the most ravishing-looking horror films of its period. For all their allure and invention, the neon colors and the strong contrasts between the hot pink lighting and deep blue backgrounds resulted in a fairly sludgy-looking VHS presentation back in the day, so it's a pleasure to see the movie in high-definition and hear the new 5.1 remix. The R-rated running time was 84m 36s, minus the MGM logos, and the new unrated cut clocks in at 85m 16s -- a total of 1m 20s added. The major addition, the eye-sucking scene, is pretty revolting, but in a way that has you chuckling at the outrageousness of it all. Sometimes restored scenes will propel a tentative film toward triumph, but this isn't one of those cases. The restored footage completes the film, but it's not substantially improved by the restoration.

As I say, I've always liked FROM BEYOND. Seeing it complete for the first time, I find I still like it, but with reservations. It's got brilliant ideas, but the scripting (by Dennis Paoli and Stuart Gordon) is uneven, the supporting performances (beyond the three leads) are often amateurish, the special effects are dated and sometimes unconvincing, and the pace is slack at times -- and not entirely because the terror is so cerebral. I love the Resonator. It's no RE-ANIMATOR, but as always, it's a pleasure to see the integrity of art triumph once again over the politics of its time.

POSTSCRIPT 6/15/06: Domenick Fraumeni has contributed a posting to this thread at the Mobius Home Video Forum that details all the additions to the director's cut of FROM BEYOND. I have also amended my comments above to reflect some fact-checking I've done since originally posting this.

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